Chapter 11 - The Memory in the Rain
Luca froze.
"The hospital?" Luca asked.
Leo backed into his apartment, his chest heaving. "When I was ten. My mother, Sarah, was dying of leukemia. We were in St. Jude’s."
I felt a cold shock hit my system. St. Jude’s. The same hospital Anna had been treated at.
"I was sitting in the waiting room," Leo said, his voice trembling. "A woman came and sat next to me. She had dark hair. She was so kind. She gave me a candy bar and asked about my mom."
Leo pointed at the diamond bracelet on Julia’s wrist.
"She was wearing that exact bracelet."
Julia touched the diamonds, tears springing to her eyes. "My mother."
"She told me my father was a very important man," Leo whispered. "She said he didn't know about me, but that he would have loved me if he did. And then..." Leo swallowed hard. "She pointed down the hallway. To a man in a dark suit, yelling at the doctors to save his wife."
Leo looked directly at Luca.
"It was you. You were the man in the hallway. The woman told me, 'That's him, Leo. That's your father. But you can never tell him, or bad men will hurt you.'"
Luca broke.
He stepped into the apartment and fell to his knees in front of his son.
"I didn't know," Luca sobbed, grabbing Leo's hands. "God forgive me, Leo, I didn't know. If I had known, I would have burned the world down to protect you and your mother."
Leo stared down at the Mafia boss kneeling on his cheap rug.
For a moment, he didn't move. Then, slowly, twenty-five years of abandonment, confusion, and loneliness melted away.
Leo dropped to his knees too.
He threw his arms around Luca, burying his face in his father's shoulder.
"I thought you didn't want me," Leo cried.
"I want you," Luca swore, holding his son as if letting go would make him vanish. "You are my blood. You are my son. You are a Moretti."
Julia knelt beside them, wrapping her arms around her new brother and her father.
I stood in the doorway, watching the shattered pieces of a family finally fuse back together.
Anna had orchestrated this. Even from the grave, she had guided them to this exact moment.
Two days later.
The storm had passed. The sun was shining over the Moretti estate.
The house was completely transformed.
The oppressive, dark energy of the syndicate had been banished. The guards were relaxed. The heavy curtains were pulled open to let the light in.
Julia had officially taken control of the board. She was proving to be a ruthless but fair leader, modernizing the business and cutting out the violence Marco had bred.
Leo had moved into the guest house. He was sitting on the patio right now, drinking coffee and laughing as my mother told him a rambling, entirely fictional story about a raccoon she thought she saw in the garden.
He didn't care about the mob. He didn't want the money. He just wanted a family.
I was in the kitchen, packing my medical bag.
My ten-day contract was technically over.
Luca was entirely healthy. The fog was gone. The poison was a thing of the past.
I zipped the bag shut.
"Are you really leaving?"
I turned around.
Luca was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He was wearing a casual linen shirt, looking ten years younger than the man I had met a week ago.
"My job is done, Luca," I smiled gently. "You're not a patient anymore."
He walked toward me.
"You're right. I'm not a patient."
He stopped a few inches away.
"But I'm also not the man I was before you walked into that bedroom and opened the forbidden drawer," he said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the old pharmacy bottle. The one that had started it all.
He twisted the cap off.
He dumped the contents into his hand.
It wasn't pills.
It was a key.
A sleek, silver key to a house on Lake Michigan. The house in the photograph on his nightstand.
"Anna told me to never go back to that house until my soul was at peace," Luca said softly. "I haven't been there in seven years."
He held the key out to me.
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"I want to go this weekend," he said, looking deeply into my eyes. "But I don't want to go alone."
TITLE: The House on the Lake
